Adventure Gamers - Forums

I believe it’s more different factors all together than one single reason.

First you need to know that adventure games in Germany are more popular than in other countries in term of sales, but it’s not outstanding, if an adventure game sells 10K units full price on PC in Germany it will be considered as a success in 2012 (and it will sell 25K units lifetime). We could sell 30K units at full price back in 2003-2004 (100K+ units lifetime). so overall the sales of one adventure game in Germany, even a very famous one, lifetime, will not reach 100K units today, meaning that the sales in retail decreased there just like in any other territories, France, UK, or US for the last 10 years.
Germany still sells more units than any other country in Europe, whatever the genre, Farming Simulator alone sells in Germany what it sells worlwide on PC for example.

The differences are still here, but there are only partly specific to the adventure genre:

1. Germany is still traditionalist, there are less sales in Germany in Digital that in other countries in term of % compared to overall sales, Germans are still buying paper press, while it disappeared everywhere else and trust what the journalist write, it’s decreasing but slower than anywhere else.
This taste for old-school industry is also valid for the genre, Germany is producing Simulators, adventures, tactical RPG, genre that are not that popular anymore but they work pretty well on the domestic market
2. Adventure Games in 2D cost little money to be produced, we are speaking about 100-400K euros here, compared to 2ME+ for the testament of Sherlock Holmes or 20MUSD+ for LA noire.
3. the local Publishers and local Journalist are working hand in hand most of the time, it means, journalist and publishers discuss and compromise about previews and reviews,rankings, etc..it could be qualified as conflict of interest or corruption in other countries, but in Germany this art of dialog is really helping the local industry, this is pretty unique.
4. Germany has 90Millions inhabitants and the 4th ww economy, it has a big domestic market, one localization is easily recoupable when you sell 10K units
5. Adventure games makes it rarely on consoles, the lesser the budget, the more point and click it is, the less chance it has to be on consoles, therefore the console countries (UK, Japan, US) where console sales are so much higher than PC, are disqualified as country producing adventure games. Germany was and still is a PC country.
6. Strategy Games was they key genre in Germany in the last ‘90s mid 2000’, but those titles cost far more to be developed today than 10 years ago,and the sales decreased, meaning that the local publishers had to find another genre to produce in Germany.
7. everyone else in the world dropped adventures, leaving the door open for a country to become the leader, but instead of a country you can really count one publisher, Daedelic, the others are mostly taking advantage of Daedelic works in term of marketing, which is excellent by the way, it’s young, it’s a little underground, not taking itself too seriously…

finally, we tend to think that Adventure games are now made in Germany and it became well known accepted fact. The reality is different, mostly modest 2D adventure games were produced in Germany for the last 5 years and they got domestic ranking of 80, 85, 90, as soon as they cross the border they lose 15-30 points in raking (cf metacritic). The sales of German adventure games are not great. They are ok.
However step by step, the rest of the world finally consider that Germans owns the adventure genre and that they do some good ones, it’s possible we end up German adventure games have the same reputation than German cars.

Do not underestimate the influence German Computer Game magazines had on the success of adventure games. Most of the popular mag´s(Power Play & ASM ) writers have been big fans of adventure games and new LucasArts releases have been featured on covers pretty frequently.

http://www.kultboy.com/index.php?site=t&id=2573&s=2 (Power Play)
http://www.kultboy.com/index.php?site=t&id=198 (ASM)

Since I´m from Austria I got my hands on those as well and the articles really intensified my interest in the genre after having played Maniac Mansion for the 1st tme.

Germany is also where most boardgames are created nowadays.  I think they are simply a more cerebral audience.

The trailer for The Night of the Rabbit made me wonder about this, thanks Wael for this post!

Wael - 20 January 2013 06:13 AM

I believe it’s more different factors all together than one single reason.

First you need to know that adventure games in Germany are more popular than in other countries in term of sales, but it’s not outstanding, if an adventure game sells 10K units full price on PC in Germany it will be considered as a success in 2012 (and it will sell 25K units lifetime). We could sell 30K units at full price back in 2003-2004 (100K+ units lifetime). so overall the sales of one adventure game in Germany, even a very famous one, lifetime, will not reach 100K units today, meaning that the sales in retail decreased there just like in any other territories, France, UK, or US for the last 10 years.
Germany still sells more units than any other country in Europe, whatever the genre, Farming Simulator alone sells in Germany what it sells worlwide on PC for example.

The differences are still here, but there are only partly specific to the adventure genre:

1. Germany is still traditionalist, there are less sales in Germany in Digital that in other countries in term of % compared to overall sales, Germans are still buying paper press, while it disappeared everywhere else and trust what the journalist write, it’s decreasing but slower than anywhere else.
This taste for old-school industry is also valid for the genre, Germany is producing Simulators, adventures, tactical RPG, genre that are not that popular anymore but they work pretty well on the domestic market
2. Adventure Games in 2D cost little money to be produced, we are speaking about 100-400K euros here, compared to 2ME+ for the testament of Sherlock Holmes or 20MUSD+ for LA noire.
3. the local Publishers and local Journalist are working hand in hand most of the time, it means, journalist and publishers discuss and compromise about previews and reviews,rankings, etc..it could be qualified as conflict of interest or corruption in other countries, but in Germany this art of dialog is really helping the local industry, this is pretty unique.
4. Germany has 90Millions inhabitants and the 4th ww economy, it has a big domestic market, one localization is easily recoupable when you sell 10K units
5. Adventure games makes it rarely on consoles, the lesser the budget, the more point and click it is, the less chance it has to be on consoles, therefore the console countries (UK, Japan, US) where console sales are so much higher than PC, are disqualified as country producing adventure games. Germany was and still is a PC country.
6. Strategy Games was they key genre in Germany in the last ‘90s mid 2000’, but those titles cost far more to be developed today than 10 years ago,and the sales decreased, meaning that the local publishers had to find another genre to produce in Germany.
7. everyone else in the world dropped adventures, leaving the door open for a country to become the leader, but instead of a country you can really count one publisher, Daedelic, the others are mostly taking advantage of Daedelic works in term of marketing, which is excellent by the way, it’s young, it’s a little underground, not taking itself too seriously…

finally, we tend to think that Adventure games are now made in Germany and it became well known accepted fact. The reality is different, mostly modest 2D adventure games were produced in Germany for the last 5 years and they got domestic ranking of 80, 85, 90, as soon as they cross the border they lose 15-30 points in raking (cf metacritic). The sales of German adventure games are not great. They are ok.
However step by step, the rest of the world finally consider that Germans owns the adventure genre and that they do some good ones, it’s possible we end up German adventure games have the same reputation than German cars.

Thanks for the incredibly insightful assessment! This should be stickied because the connection between adventure games and Germany is always being asked.

I always believed that, in general, Germans were smarter than other Europeans and that they have a culture that values hard work and all that. Always hearing about how European countries are begging Germany to bail them out. Aren’t Germans not too pleased about bailing out the European welfare state? Also, they have a great engineering tradition, up there with US and Japan.

So, my theory is that German culture and intelligence leads to an environment where challenging cerebral entertainment activities are valued more than in, say, Italy. No offense, Italy.

Now this post probably sounds absolutely horrible and cliche-ridden, but I’m just positing a theory. I’m just speaking in very general terms.

Quest1 - 17 May 2013 07:35 AM

I always believed that, in general, Germans were smarter than other Europeans and that they have a culture that values hard work and all that. Always hearing about how European countries are begging Germany to bail them out. Also, they have a great engineering tradition, up there with US and Japan.

So, my theory is that German culture and intelligence leads to an environment where challenging cerebral entertainment activities are valued more than in, say, Italy. No offense, Italy.

Now this post probably sounds absolutely horrible and cliche-ridden, but I’m just positing a theory. I’m just speaking in very general terms.

Only problem is, smart people would not make adventure games. They don’t bring in the $$$.

Iznogood - 17 May 2013 12:02 PM

Personally i think the main reason is the size of Germany + German speaking in other countries, combined with the fact that they are used to having foreign movies and tv-shows dubbed with German actors.

This question has puzzled me for long time and I think this sounds logical. In Europe localization is an important factor in sales. Well, in some countries at least, I wouldn’t say that applies to e.g. Nordic countries. Anyways, adventure games tend to shine in dialogue and story so text/speech in local language is really something special. At least compared to a - let’s say - shooter. I believe in English speaking countries adventure games (in English) didn’t stand out as novelties, because every single game was in English anyways.

Of course there needs to be domestic market that can support the developers and naturally developers that are capable of delivering quality products. So why Germany and not other big countries e.g. France or Spain? Well, I don’t really know, but I guess that it all depends on the developers.

In France Infogrames did some adventure games, but I think that was bought and became Atari. Ubisoft became so big that it didn’t focus such a small niche anymore. Of course there is Quantic Dream, but that was established late 90s.

My knowledge about Spain is close to zero, but at least there was Aventuras that went bankrupt. Now there’s at least Pendulo Studios, but maybe there weren’t enough developers during the 90s to create an adventure game ‘boom’ similar to Germany.

To conclude, I have no clue. It may even be that the genre would be equally popular in some other (smaller) country, but we just aren’t aware of that.

I think this is a very interesting topic. What are some other forms of entertainment or art that are especially popular in Germany, but less so in other countries?

Quest1 - 18 May 2013 07:43 AM

I think this is a very interesting topic. What are some other forms of entertainment or art that are especially popular in Germany, but less so in other countries?